whitened the ground with pebbles of ice. It had swept up to Vadrome
Mountain, and had marched furiously through the forest, carrying down
hundreds of trees, drowning the roars of wild animals and the crying and
fluttering of birds. One hour of ravage and rage, and then, spent and
bodiless, the storm crept down the other side of the mountain and into
the next parish, whither the affrighted quack-doctor had betaken himself.
After, a perfect calm, a shining sun, and a sweet smell over all the
land, which had thirstily drunk the battering showers.

In the house on Vadrome Mountain the tailor of Chaudiere had watched the
storm with sympathetic interest. It was in accord with his own feelings.
He had had a hard fight for months past, and had gone down in the storm
of his emotions one night when a song called Champagne Charlie had had a
weird and thrilling antiphonal. There had been a subsequent debacle for
himself, and then a revelation concerning Jo Portugais. Ensued hours and
days, wherein he had fought a desperate fight with the present--with
himself and the reaction from his dangerous debauch.

The battle for his life had been fought for him by this gloomy woodsman
who henceforth represented his past, was bound to him by a measureless
gratitude, almost a sacrament--of the damned. Of himself he had played
no conscious part in it till the worst was over. On the one side was the
Cure, patient, gentle, friendly, never pushing forward the Faith which
the good man dreamed should give him refuge and peace; on the other side
was the murderer, who typified unrest, secretiveness, an awful isolation,
and a remorse which had never been put into words or acts of restitution.
For six days the tailor-shop and the life at Chaudiere had been things
almost apart from his consciousness. Ever-recurring memories of Rosalie
Evanturel were driven from his mind with a painful persistence. In the
shadows where his nature dwelt now he would not allow her good innocence